Dear Tara,

This month's Vanity Fair article about the woman with cancer is a hard read. I haven't read half of it.

I remember you telling me about being in class and feeling the lump on your clavicle and it moving as you raised your arm to give an answer. I think about the overwhelming confusion you felt. I think about you rubbing it wondering what the fuck you were going to do and if you were going to tell me.

Sometimes I think I should wear your perfume so that the children can smell you and not me. I want them to remember you and your smell.

I get sad with Jacob's happiness sometimes because he is so much happier now that you are dead than he was when you were alive. He's only 3. He knew you were dying and he just didn't want to cope. Will he remember your inability to not walk? Will he remember anything about you? That's just such a fucking stupid question because he's 3 and won't remember you at all. Your hair. If anything, he'll remember you bald. I'll keep your photos around but I know that won't help and that fucking does something more than making me sad. It kills some part of me.

With everything our mother did, I remember certain things about her. Her smell. The way her face felt in my hands. I don't want your children remembering an antiseptic smell. Your bloated face from your steriords. Your bloated body. I want them to remember you without my memories filling their head. This is so overwhelming for me because I have never wanted to just deal with things of this nature. It's hard for me.

I hope everyday I make you proud in some way. I'm raising your children and I know that before you died there was a certain part of you that hated me for having this gift. Why you and not me? I didn't have any children to live for. I didn't have someone calling me mommy. Mommy is another name for God to children. I am sorry it was you and not me because they need you. Every fucking day.

Jacob starts preschool on Tuesday and how amazing because like you, I just didn't fill out the fucking paperwork and somehow, through the grace of God, he just magically enrolled. Thank you for that. You have no idea.

Did you laugh silently watching Violet fall and chip her two front teeth exactly like yours? She looks so much like you sometimes that it's scary because it's like I'm sitting there looking at you. Which is something I took for granted in the last few years of your life. What I wouldn't give to just hug you and talk to you. Just to hear you call my name and hear your laugh and see that look in your eyes when you thought something I said was fucking funny. You always got my stupid sarcastic jokes at the tv.

You were all I had. And the other day, did you hear dad pause when I asked him about moving to AR and he said something about his opinion doesn't matter and I said, "Dad, you're the only one I have left, though" and he just sat there for a few seconds before being a dumbass and talking about our uncle that everyone hates. That shit was so funny. "Well you do have Dudley," not even his real name. God Dad. He misses you, too.

I didn't think he was going to make it the night you died. How many times did he fucking call me that night crying. At least 22 and you had died at 450 that afternoon. I can't imagine what that night was like for him.

I miss you. More than I have before. I wish you could come back to me. I would give it if I could. You know that I would.